A glorious synthesis and extension of your ideas. I devoured this article. The implications are where this really gets the heart racing. This feels like the foundation for a resynthesis of science and religion, just what humanity needs to burst into a new post-reductionist era.
Thank you Shane. Yes, I think this approach can potentially end much of the conflict between science and religion. A highly evolved universe, travelling along a developmental path that is fine-tuned to produce intelligent life, is explicable in terms of science, while fulfilling many of the functions of a religious belief system. I keep returning to that old quote of Teilhard de Chardin, "The universe is God coming into being."
The idea of early black hole formation driving later star and galaxy formation a great idea, but I can't think of any reason you need to bring in evolution. If you haul in evolution, you have to come up with a mechanism that preserves some of the laws of physics across the creation of a new one while allowing others to vary. Darwin could at least start out with the empirical fact of heredity. New organisms largely resemble their parent organisms. We have nothing like this with regard to universe formation.
This is especially problematic since the whole evolutionary idea is unnecessary. Why not just invoke the anthropic principle? Here we are debating this. That's an empirical fact. Why haul in so much extraneous complexity. Why deal with annoyed evolutionary biologists who have their own philosophical concerns? There's an awful lot of teleology here. We don't know how new universes are formed, and almost by definition we can't know much about them.
It makes much more sense to develop a theory that explains our universe without bonus mysticism, and it looks like you have a good one here. I don't see how it benefits from introducing failed universes and the possibility of super-universes and the like. It offers a good framework for addressing the early galaxy problem, the voids and filaments problem and, for all I know, the rotation curve problem.
P.S. In N-body research, there's a common pattern of increasingly tightly coupled subsystems with their angular momentum dissipated by overall system expansion. This fits very well with that. Complexity develops from the basic mathematics of gravitational attraction in an expanding universe. I took most of The Janus Point with a grain of salt, but I suspect the discussion of the N-body problem is at least aligned.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
Stellar work! You've not only made a daring rush at the truth, unsupported by conventional credentials, but given us all a great deal of fun in the process. You might be right, too, of course, and justly win universal praise.
As you continue to explore the rich theme of the Eggiverse, give a thought to the possibility that the universe has been (super-)naturally selected to reproduce with the help of human agency. Reëcreational Theology embraces that hypothesis and from it makes an argument for having s*x (like biological sex but moreso) with the universe; see: https://t0morrow.substack.com/
Congratulations; you're well on your way to sainthood in the first real science of theology.
Thank you, I think! If evolutionary cosmology gains traction, I do think there will be an extraordinarily fertile conversation between science and religion. The boundaries will get very blurred. (And I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance to that, from both the science and religion sides.)
Geoff, you are clearly riding on the breaking crest of the shockwave of what is likely to eventually be recognized as the most profound revolution in science to now. I, too, am a rider on the boundaries of several sciences, natural philosophy, and epistemology. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of my early life, I was already a polymath by the time I finished elementary school - where more than 90% of my learning was extracurricular. Even when finishing secondary education in San Diego's top university prep school as a science major covering a pre-engineering curriculum, at least 70% of my learning would have been extracurricular - more than enough for me to be riding several shockwave crests. In my professional careers, these shockwaves led me into 2 years of postdoc study of the history and epistemology of science, especially revolutionary paradigm busting, amongst numerous other diversions into other bodies of knowledge.
I have a deep understanding of many of the problems you are facing, and I have most of the disciplinary and epistemological tools you are asking for above. The only one where I would be a dead loss is with funding. I'm retired, living on Australia's aged pension and a small amount of US Social Security (at least until Trump decides expats are traitors...).
Some Background
My combination of learnings is so unique that I think some background is required to understand how the multidisciplinary skill set I claim is even possible to be found and still to be functional in a single person - even though it was acquired over an 85-year life span.
I was raised by two scientifically trained parents (my Mother has a BS in Chemistry, and my Father has a BS in Geology and worked as a salesman, boatsman, industrial engineer, boat-builder, commercial fisherman, and integrated logistic support engineer). We lived full-time on a 1929 "gentleman's motor yacht" that Dad served on part-time in the Coast Guard Auxiliary when it was drafted as a harbor patrol boat in WWII, grabbed and refurbished when it was demobilized as war surplus in 1945. On workdays and school days, our home was moored in LA/Long Beach Harbor in the midst of active oilfields and then San Diego Harbor, home of the US Pacific Fleet ships and the Navy's West Coast aircraft repair and maintenance facility, along with a plethora of high-tech industries, research institutes, museums, etc. -- including aquaria, astronautics, natural history, nuclear power, marine biology/oceanography, zoos, etc. When we weren't required to be in port, our yacht spent a lot of time anchored in several of the many coves around Catalina Island, where I spent hours of the day snorkeling around the extensive kelp forests and rocky shorelines.
Carl Sagan explored the Universe in his "Ship of the Imagination -- [for observing, thinking, speculating and testing] – perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds dreamed, and worlds of fact". My ship of the imagination was real: stout cedar hull & varnished mahogany superstructure that physically carried me to many different living worlds that I could touch, smell, feel and interact with, and worlds of theoretical, technical, and biological knowledge.
Some of my relevant areas of expertise and knowledge (order of initiation). Once started, my interests and learning in each of these bodies of knowledge continued through my life up to today.
• physical geology and paleontology (from 1945 - father's 1930's textbooks & local oil-fields and pristine landscapes of offshore islands + added resources in physical oceanography and geophysical research facilities accessible from secondary schools in San Diego).
• marine biology, ecology, and systematics across beaches, rocky shores, eutrophic estuaries & harbors with muddy bottoms, piers & floats, sea-grass meadows; open ocean; kelp forests, rocky shores with coraline algae, various red and brown algeas, sea grasses in rock and sand-bottomed coves on offshore bottoms, etc. (from 1945 - accessed via the family's yacht. The combination of Earth sciences with the breadth of marine biology, led to strong early interests in evolution).
• physics & engineering with a focus on nuclear physics and engineering, astronomy, & cosmology (from 1945 - following atom bombing of Japan - facilitated by access to good libraries, Griffith Observatory -- mid '40s and early '50s, and in high school and university access to 100" Mt Wilson Telescope and San Diego's aerospace research, development & manufacturing institutes & astronomical facilities. The addition of physics and cosmology to Earth sciences and evolutionary biology clearly extended to considering the nature of time and the evolutionary universe).
• Microscopy, microbiology, optics, and microanatomy (from around 1948 when a retired photographer living on a neighboring yacht gave me a set of professional objective lenses that fit the screw threads on a toy microscope I had. I soon kludged the rest of the mechanics and optics required to give me a university quality microscope that allowed me to explore the diversity of microscopic life from which most of the animal and plant phyla - and their embryos - evolved. Teaching invertebrate biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided me with access to a high-powered, long-focus medical microscope, which afforded ample opportunities to study the unfettered activities of various phyla of microbiota through the side of marine and freshwater aquaria.)
• marine and aerospace engineering and production (from 1945 - when my father began restoring our family yacht and rebuilding two surplus landings into highly capable albacore trollers amongst the WWII shipyards, and later worked as a boat handler for Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose", for several decades the largest heavier than air craft ever flown. From around 1962, when we moved to San Diego, he worked as an industrial and logistic support engineer for Ryan Aeronautical and then overhaul & repair of the Pacific Naval Air Arm at North Island Air Station just across the channel from where we were moored. And then San Diego was also the home of General Dynamics' development and production of Atlas rockets that launched the Moon landers.)
Beginning with my tertiary education in 1957, my areas of expertise began expanding exponentially. These will only be listed - again, more or less in the order they were acquired.
• All generations of computer technologies: cybernetics, analysis, design, flow charting, and programming.
• General biology & natural history: origin of life & exobiology, population biology, biogeography, niche construction, and systematics & classification.
• Radiation and systems ecology: engineering & remote sensing analyses of nuclear accidents (e.g., Fukushima Daiichi, Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, etc.), biological and civilian impacts of environmental radiation, radiological tracing, isotopic dating, trophic ecology, and food webs.
• Other ecology: e.g., wildfire origins & succession.
• Biochemistry and structural biology: molecular biology, cell biology & ultrastructure, histology, and functional & comparative anatomy.
• Earth sciences: plate tektonics, geomorphology, stratigraphy, climatology, glaciology, physical oceanography, hydrology, natural sources of greenhouse gases and their feedback contributions to global warming.
• Historical studies: history of philosophy of science and technology, nature and structure of scientific revolutions after Thomas Kuhn, nature of wars (focus on WWII), biography of leadership, social change, economic structure, comparative religion, archeology, hominin evolution, emergence of language and self-consciousness, coevolution of cognition and technologies.
• Theory of heirarchically complex living systems: emergence of autopoiesis at several levels of organization, organizational epistemology, OODA cycles, and management of organizational knowledge.
• Complexity, assembly theory, chaos, complex systems analysis. Engineering: Failure modes effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), logistics support engineering and analysis, integrated project lifecycle data & documentation management, engineering change management, etc. Biology: emergence, phylogenesis, thresholds, collapse, extinction. Evolutionary cosmology.
• Philosophy & epistemology: evolutionary epistemology, normal science, truth, verification, falsification, fallibility, objective vs subjective knowledge, Kuhn's paradigms & scientific revolutions, radical constructivism, reductionism, comparative approach, fake news & alternative facts, prediction, anticipation, forecasting, modeling, Popper's three worlds of knowledge, teleology & teleonomy, Aristotle's four causes, Ockham's razor, philosophy of mind.
As soon as I have the time, I will share some of my relevant writings and make several suggestions as to where your theory can be strengthened and extended. There is very little I would disagree with in terms of your theoretical proposals or interpretation of evidence.
William Hall, PhD
Retired: evolutionary biologist / epistemologist / complex systems analyst & designer / earth systems scientist
Cool theory, love it. Unlikely as it appears, it would be really funny if a major branch of physics ended up disrupted by a complete outsider's theory formulated in qualitative (non-math) language.
I remember reading that S. Hawking more or less proved that black holes radiate energy, so that smaller ones can end up vanishing entirely. How does that fit with your theory, or Smolin's? If the creation of a black hole also creates a universe, what happens to that universe when the black hole vanishes?
I really like the cosmological part, seems like a neat solution to many important problems. Nice work!
But I am not convinced at all by the evolutionary part:
1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition.
2. To have evolution we need reproduction, which we have here, but also some competition for resources. Do universes compete for something among themselves? In an evolutionary theory I would like to see a conclusion that in the long run there are no universes not optimized for survival. Without that we can only say that our universe is more probable than a universe which cannot harbor us, but that's not super interesting.
3. It is unecessary to make cosmological part work. I suppose they fit nicely together, but if cosmological part explains observations and gives correct predictions it does so regardless of a reason for our universe's starting conditions.
Thanks for that feedback, Michał. I am going to cheat and paste in again the lengthy reply I just made to Kaleberg, immediately above, because I see you're troubled by the same thing, the evolutionary part of the theory, and my reply is therefore essentially the same.
But I'll add in an extra point of reassurance for you first, though: To have evolution work in the case of universes, you don't need competition for resources. Universe have important differences from DNA-based animals. Universes, for example, can produce matter-antimatter pairs in unlimited numbers immediately after the Big Bang. They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.
And here is my reply to Kaleberg, again!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
“They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.”
1. If either process is done freely and don’t compete for resources, how can anything be said to be more or less efficient than another? Time is an in-universe constraint, it doesn’t exist outside of it, so there should be the same amount of outside-universe ‘types’ proliferating since they do so instantly and infinitely from their own pov.
You’d have to be suggesting some sort of meta/multi verse environment (which we inherently can never know about) where time still exists and universes spawn in some sort of limited space with one being able to reproduce ‘faster’ than the other. Otherwise, with zero reproductive cost and time being solely an in-universe constraint, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’.
2. Also, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
3. And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
Surely the main issue is how is the information [of how the ancester universes were constructed] of a successful universe is passed on to its daughter universes.
For the question of selection for 'successful universes', is this not simply a function of the number of daughter universes produced through the lifetime of a universe ie the more productive come to dominate the pool of potential universes that have come to exist [so far].
Because time or indeed any notions of scarcity or a limited pool only exist within the universe. Universes producing only 1 black hole and those producing billions would be equally ‘successful’ because there is no meaningful notion of an extra-universal environment for them to be competing in. It would just happen immediately and in perpetuity from an extra-universal pov (if such a thing can be said to exist).
Granted, though the absence of a 'mechanism' is not evidence for an idea being wrong. An example is the early to mid 20th century idea of 'continental drift', which was dismissed because there was no conceivable mechanism for lateral movement of continents until it was reframed in the 1960s as 'plate tectonics'.
My intuition is that the concepts of time and space are not operable in a multiverse where the author's concept of 'evolution' [of a universe towards one like ours] applies.
I’m not sure why you are using the word mechanism or how it applies to what I said.
But yes, your second paragraph is my point. It’s not intuitive however, we know objectively that time, causality, space are in-universe features that began with or shortly after the big bang.
2. That’s what I was thinking. If the reproductive cost is zero, per the article, and given that time is an in-universe constraint rather than existing outside of it, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’, if my logic is on track here.
Moreover, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
At any rate, this article is very interesting and I love his critiques of the mainstream theory and reasons behind it. Personally, I think that reality tends to be more interesting than whatever story we come up with to draw meaning from it, which is why his theory seems (to me anyway) to lose momentum when he gets into the cosmological and more speculative section.
"1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition."
I am a hobbyist at best and I'm sure I haven't grasped everything fully, so please indulge me. I agree with your statement, yet perhaps we could see galaxies from relatives-universes.
Could galaxies from neighboring universes expand toward us, be observable and perhaps even collide with a galaxy of ours? Could the origin of such galaxies be detected as different?
Without presuming another dimension, I'd guess that the multiverse resembles a clump of multiplying cells butting up against each other.
Any small black hole we create technologically (Mt. Everest mass) would be vastly inferior to our own universe. I see no reason to think such a small thing could contain enough energy, matter, complexity, etc. to generate a universe inside it capable of ultimately holding life. And that defeats the whole technological part of the argument.
Or do you suggest that there's a weird aspect to black holes that makes them all similar in scope and quality when you're inside them, regardless of their size as observed from the outside? That would be very strange indeed.
I suggest you look into black hole electrons, an old hypothesis that fell out of favor mostly because nobody could figure out how to test it, because I think you may be grossly underestimating the number of black holes involved.
Because it seems to me that the theory predicts something else: Every particle that can be made out of a black hole, will be made out of a black hole.
Aaaaargh! Yes, black hole electrons are an alarming possibility. Thanks for reminding me, I won't sleep tonight now...
No, I don't go there, because as you say, it seems untestable right now. And of course there are also the disturbing parallels between protons and black holes...
But again, I'm not qualified to wade into such deep water. I will stick to my modest task of explaining material reality at the macro scale in terms of evolution of universes...
I asked AI to compare your beautiful theory with my nested universe (NU) model and it found many similarities (A Universe That Doesn't Die (80) - by JOHANN OESTERREICHER). However, I work without Smolin's evolution and big bang as an eternally recycling system.
You often make me cry in grief and gratitude. The quote from Victor Weisskopf brought this whole thing into the sharpest of focus. This is the woo - a word used by Rockiversists to shame and silence the mystics among us. Woo is the romantic-love-feeling-courting of the world (Sophie Strand is talking about this). Woo is the seeking to connect heart and love and consciousness with the physical world that we have been disconnected from by a world view belief and paradigm that claimed total authority on "reality". This is a return of the personal and particular heart-based relationship with the physical world that we need for thriving. Thank you. Paid for subscription. This is the world that I want to live in.
Yes! I'm just a lay person into my third reading of this article, and every time my eyes get watery at the end. I just want to leave a thank you and encourage his work.
You might want to avoid association with him because he is a pariah in scientific mainstream, but Rupert Sheldrake has always been a great idol of mine, and I was wondering if you were at all inspired by him. He has spoken quite a bit about how structures (& physical rules) of the universe emerge through evolutionary processes. He's also fleshed out quite a few predictions, scientifically testable hypothesis that I think can be repurposed by your evolutionary cosmology.
Oh I haven't heard of his stuff about universes emerging through evo processes? I'm curious about it.
He is a bit ostracized for sure. He has some really interesting and relevant stuff, but many of his fans seem to particularly love his "morphic fields" theory which to me is so ridiculous it risks spoiling the rest of his content -- not because it's unbelievable or unreasonable as a theoretical framework (I love theories like this that push back against mainstream, often reductionist models) but because it seems to have to real explanatory value or intrigue whatsoever. It strikes me as something un-iterative that occupies the same space as countless other similar models that exist primarily to critique conformity, without having anything extra going for it.
I might be missing the mechanisms of heredity within this evolutionary paradigm. If a universe's 'fitness' is simply determined by the propensity for black holes to form within it, i.e:
1. Black holes spawn universes
2. Universes well-suited for black holes production greatly outnumber those where black holes are scarce
3. Technological societies provide an immense evolutionary advantage in this context, as technological progress converges towards the creation of artificial black holes (which greatly outnumber naturally-formed ones)
how then would universes inherit from the context of their spawning black hole? What might be the analogue to recombination or mosaicism yielding subtle incremental differences subject to selective pressure?
First, this is fantastic. I found Smolin's book three years ago, when Covid gave me time and motivation to think about why the universe exists. The concept forms its own gravitational well that sucks in those of us who share the instinct that dark matter is not delivering on its initial promise. I am grateful you are doing this project, and building a community of people crazy enough to take it seriously.
I want to get feedback on a related theory that shepherds the universe to the exact same fine-tuned constants as your and Smolin's evolution, but without going through trial and error phase. I would really like your reaction. (Yes, the theory is mine, and yes I also have no formal background to support the notion that I can generate a useful theory here. So it goes. I've been sitting on this for a while, without a community to test it on, so again, huge thanks for having the courage to start publishing on line here.)
The endpoint is trillions of technologically-produced black holes. And the mechanism is that while you are positing we get there by sampling potential futures in series (one at a time, through evolution), I think we get to the same place by sampling potential futures in parallel.
Here is how.
Rather than arrive at the end state of intelligent life through cycles of trial and error (black hole birth and universe creation), we can instead posit the following: (a) the physical constants of the universe could be something else (other than what we see, which are weirdly fined tuned for life); (b) those constants are actually variables at sufficiently high energy, like at the moment of the Big Bang; (c) the constants physically freeze into place as the universe cools; (d) this freezing is really an annealing process; and (e) the path that leads to the most rapid cooling is the one that gets frozen in. That's it. If you assume that, you find yourself on a path to intelligent life.
Why? One weird property of life is that it accelerates the creation of entropy. Life is good at finding pockets of energy, consuming that energy to create more life, and releasing low grade heat as a byproduct. Intelligent life is theoretically even more efficient at this than run-of-the-mill life. As you point out, black hole formation is the ultimate way of converting energy to entropy. So a theory that says "black hole formation is reproductive" and one that says "black hole formation is maximally energy dissipating, and the universe will go down the path that cools most quickly" end up in exactly the same place at the end.
The reason I like this theory, even after reading yours and Smolin's, is that the mechanism for fine-tuning isn't reliant on a random walk. It does require one large, uncomfortable leap: the annealing process has to be impacted by events that occur far in the future, after those constants have been fixed (e.g., the constants forming at/near the Big Bang has to somehow be influence by the ability to form life billions of years later). Smolin's theory allows the universe to sampling possible states through a random walk. This idea instead posits an anneal process that samples possible future universe through what is probably a uncollapsed quantum state that encompasses future times. If you think about it long enough, the anneal process requires some degree of retrocausality, which not exactly a great place to be. But also we have really had trouble figuring out how time actually works in physics, there are versions of retrocausality in quantum theory that are not entirely nuts, and, well, at some point we know that some laws of physics need to be rethought for the universe to make sense. I vote for this one, but understand that's a matter of taste.
I think that everything else you predict would hold for an annealed system vs an evolved one. Again, the only difference is evolution samples future states in series, while the anneal samples in parallel.
I would love comment, feedback, and conversation. Thanks again.
Yes, the key question is how the information relevant for 'cosmological evolution' is passed to future states through black holes. Having it processed in parallel is conceptually simpler.
I wanted to specifically compliment you on how well you are able to distill an extremely esoteric and complicated set of theoretical/observational data into a well argued, coherent essay supporting your ideas. IMO not enough people understand how truly rare it is for someone to 1) even have the capacity to understand the frontiers of something such as cosmology and 2) understand this well enough to communicate it to a lay audience through a medium which is graspable. I'm a genetic counselor, so my work is analogously to translate evolution/mendelian risks to everyday people in such as a way that they can make informed decisions about things that affect their lives and that of their offspring. If you think the services of someone such as me might eventually be of use to you, let's chat more, or perhaps downstream...
One specific question if you get around to a reply: If I understood you, directly observing the EM radation from these large filaments in relation to the direct-collapse SMBHs is difficult to do because so much time has passed that these orientations in space have morphed over gajillions of years to make those relationships hard to appreciate. I'm wondering if that is also true of the large filaments that should have the North/South orientation to the SMBHs. eg. is it possible to predict, observe, and confirm if at the ends of these large filaments there are appropriately positioned SMBHs, or is this too Laplace's Demon-y to say "the angular tilty-ness of the SMBHs aligns with the direction of their massive quasar output and is what created the filament architecture we see today"?
Hoho! "If this interpretation is correct, GRB 250702B would represent the first time humanity has ever witnessed a relativistic jet produced by an intermediate mass black hole in the act of consuming a star." https://phys.org/news/2026-03-hour-explosion.html
A glorious synthesis and extension of your ideas. I devoured this article. The implications are where this really gets the heart racing. This feels like the foundation for a resynthesis of science and religion, just what humanity needs to burst into a new post-reductionist era.
Thank you Shane. Yes, I think this approach can potentially end much of the conflict between science and religion. A highly evolved universe, travelling along a developmental path that is fine-tuned to produce intelligent life, is explicable in terms of science, while fulfilling many of the functions of a religious belief system. I keep returning to that old quote of Teilhard de Chardin, "The universe is God coming into being."
Wanted, skilled plaster repair technician.
The idea of early black hole formation driving later star and galaxy formation a great idea, but I can't think of any reason you need to bring in evolution. If you haul in evolution, you have to come up with a mechanism that preserves some of the laws of physics across the creation of a new one while allowing others to vary. Darwin could at least start out with the empirical fact of heredity. New organisms largely resemble their parent organisms. We have nothing like this with regard to universe formation.
This is especially problematic since the whole evolutionary idea is unnecessary. Why not just invoke the anthropic principle? Here we are debating this. That's an empirical fact. Why haul in so much extraneous complexity. Why deal with annoyed evolutionary biologists who have their own philosophical concerns? There's an awful lot of teleology here. We don't know how new universes are formed, and almost by definition we can't know much about them.
It makes much more sense to develop a theory that explains our universe without bonus mysticism, and it looks like you have a good one here. I don't see how it benefits from introducing failed universes and the possibility of super-universes and the like. It offers a good framework for addressing the early galaxy problem, the voids and filaments problem and, for all I know, the rotation curve problem.
P.S. In N-body research, there's a common pattern of increasingly tightly coupled subsystems with their angular momentum dissipated by overall system expansion. This fits very well with that. Complexity develops from the basic mathematics of gravitational attraction in an expanding universe. I took most of The Janus Point with a grain of salt, but I suspect the discussion of the N-body problem is at least aligned.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
Stellar work! You've not only made a daring rush at the truth, unsupported by conventional credentials, but given us all a great deal of fun in the process. You might be right, too, of course, and justly win universal praise.
As you continue to explore the rich theme of the Eggiverse, give a thought to the possibility that the universe has been (super-)naturally selected to reproduce with the help of human agency. Reëcreational Theology embraces that hypothesis and from it makes an argument for having s*x (like biological sex but moreso) with the universe; see: https://t0morrow.substack.com/
Congratulations; you're well on your way to sainthood in the first real science of theology.
Thank you, I think! If evolutionary cosmology gains traction, I do think there will be an extraordinarily fertile conversation between science and religion. The boundaries will get very blurred. (And I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance to that, from both the science and religion sides.)
Bloody brilliant even though I could not possibly understand all of what is here because the majesty of existence is so well evoked.
"Now What?" -- Indeed!
Geoff, you are clearly riding on the breaking crest of the shockwave of what is likely to eventually be recognized as the most profound revolution in science to now. I, too, am a rider on the boundaries of several sciences, natural philosophy, and epistemology. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of my early life, I was already a polymath by the time I finished elementary school - where more than 90% of my learning was extracurricular. Even when finishing secondary education in San Diego's top university prep school as a science major covering a pre-engineering curriculum, at least 70% of my learning would have been extracurricular - more than enough for me to be riding several shockwave crests. In my professional careers, these shockwaves led me into 2 years of postdoc study of the history and epistemology of science, especially revolutionary paradigm busting, amongst numerous other diversions into other bodies of knowledge.
I have a deep understanding of many of the problems you are facing, and I have most of the disciplinary and epistemological tools you are asking for above. The only one where I would be a dead loss is with funding. I'm retired, living on Australia's aged pension and a small amount of US Social Security (at least until Trump decides expats are traitors...).
Some Background
My combination of learnings is so unique that I think some background is required to understand how the multidisciplinary skill set I claim is even possible to be found and still to be functional in a single person - even though it was acquired over an 85-year life span.
I was raised by two scientifically trained parents (my Mother has a BS in Chemistry, and my Father has a BS in Geology and worked as a salesman, boatsman, industrial engineer, boat-builder, commercial fisherman, and integrated logistic support engineer). We lived full-time on a 1929 "gentleman's motor yacht" that Dad served on part-time in the Coast Guard Auxiliary when it was drafted as a harbor patrol boat in WWII, grabbed and refurbished when it was demobilized as war surplus in 1945. On workdays and school days, our home was moored in LA/Long Beach Harbor in the midst of active oilfields and then San Diego Harbor, home of the US Pacific Fleet ships and the Navy's West Coast aircraft repair and maintenance facility, along with a plethora of high-tech industries, research institutes, museums, etc. -- including aquaria, astronautics, natural history, nuclear power, marine biology/oceanography, zoos, etc. When we weren't required to be in port, our yacht spent a lot of time anchored in several of the many coves around Catalina Island, where I spent hours of the day snorkeling around the extensive kelp forests and rocky shorelines.
Carl Sagan explored the Universe in his "Ship of the Imagination -- [for observing, thinking, speculating and testing] – perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds dreamed, and worlds of fact". My ship of the imagination was real: stout cedar hull & varnished mahogany superstructure that physically carried me to many different living worlds that I could touch, smell, feel and interact with, and worlds of theoretical, technical, and biological knowledge.
Some of my relevant areas of expertise and knowledge (order of initiation). Once started, my interests and learning in each of these bodies of knowledge continued through my life up to today.
• physical geology and paleontology (from 1945 - father's 1930's textbooks & local oil-fields and pristine landscapes of offshore islands + added resources in physical oceanography and geophysical research facilities accessible from secondary schools in San Diego).
• marine biology, ecology, and systematics across beaches, rocky shores, eutrophic estuaries & harbors with muddy bottoms, piers & floats, sea-grass meadows; open ocean; kelp forests, rocky shores with coraline algae, various red and brown algeas, sea grasses in rock and sand-bottomed coves on offshore bottoms, etc. (from 1945 - accessed via the family's yacht. The combination of Earth sciences with the breadth of marine biology, led to strong early interests in evolution).
• physics & engineering with a focus on nuclear physics and engineering, astronomy, & cosmology (from 1945 - following atom bombing of Japan - facilitated by access to good libraries, Griffith Observatory -- mid '40s and early '50s, and in high school and university access to 100" Mt Wilson Telescope and San Diego's aerospace research, development & manufacturing institutes & astronomical facilities. The addition of physics and cosmology to Earth sciences and evolutionary biology clearly extended to considering the nature of time and the evolutionary universe).
• Microscopy, microbiology, optics, and microanatomy (from around 1948 when a retired photographer living on a neighboring yacht gave me a set of professional objective lenses that fit the screw threads on a toy microscope I had. I soon kludged the rest of the mechanics and optics required to give me a university quality microscope that allowed me to explore the diversity of microscopic life from which most of the animal and plant phyla - and their embryos - evolved. Teaching invertebrate biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided me with access to a high-powered, long-focus medical microscope, which afforded ample opportunities to study the unfettered activities of various phyla of microbiota through the side of marine and freshwater aquaria.)
• marine and aerospace engineering and production (from 1945 - when my father began restoring our family yacht and rebuilding two surplus landings into highly capable albacore trollers amongst the WWII shipyards, and later worked as a boat handler for Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose", for several decades the largest heavier than air craft ever flown. From around 1962, when we moved to San Diego, he worked as an industrial and logistic support engineer for Ryan Aeronautical and then overhaul & repair of the Pacific Naval Air Arm at North Island Air Station just across the channel from where we were moored. And then San Diego was also the home of General Dynamics' development and production of Atlas rockets that launched the Moon landers.)
Beginning with my tertiary education in 1957, my areas of expertise began expanding exponentially. These will only be listed - again, more or less in the order they were acquired.
• All generations of computer technologies: cybernetics, analysis, design, flow charting, and programming.
• Cognitive science: neurophysiology, sensory & developmental physiology research, primate cognition, origins of consciousness & languages, artificial intelligence.
• General biology & natural history: origin of life & exobiology, population biology, biogeography, niche construction, and systematics & classification.
• Radiation and systems ecology: engineering & remote sensing analyses of nuclear accidents (e.g., Fukushima Daiichi, Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, etc.), biological and civilian impacts of environmental radiation, radiological tracing, isotopic dating, trophic ecology, and food webs.
• Other ecology: e.g., wildfire origins & succession.
• Biochemistry and structural biology: molecular biology, cell biology & ultrastructure, histology, and functional & comparative anatomy.
• Genetic systems: molecular genetics, cytogenetics, classical genetics, comparative genetics, population genetics, speciation & evolution.
• Earth sciences: plate tektonics, geomorphology, stratigraphy, climatology, glaciology, physical oceanography, hydrology, natural sources of greenhouse gases and their feedback contributions to global warming.
• Historical studies: history of philosophy of science and technology, nature and structure of scientific revolutions after Thomas Kuhn, nature of wars (focus on WWII), biography of leadership, social change, economic structure, comparative religion, archeology, hominin evolution, emergence of language and self-consciousness, coevolution of cognition and technologies.
• Theory of heirarchically complex living systems: emergence of autopoiesis at several levels of organization, organizational epistemology, OODA cycles, and management of organizational knowledge.
• Complexity, assembly theory, chaos, complex systems analysis. Engineering: Failure modes effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), logistics support engineering and analysis, integrated project lifecycle data & documentation management, engineering change management, etc. Biology: emergence, phylogenesis, thresholds, collapse, extinction. Evolutionary cosmology.
• Philosophy & epistemology: evolutionary epistemology, normal science, truth, verification, falsification, fallibility, objective vs subjective knowledge, Kuhn's paradigms & scientific revolutions, radical constructivism, reductionism, comparative approach, fake news & alternative facts, prediction, anticipation, forecasting, modeling, Popper's three worlds of knowledge, teleology & teleonomy, Aristotle's four causes, Ockham's razor, philosophy of mind.
As soon as I have the time, I will share some of my relevant writings and make several suggestions as to where your theory can be strengthened and extended. There is very little I would disagree with in terms of your theoretical proposals or interpretation of evidence.
William Hall, PhD
Retired: evolutionary biologist / epistemologist / complex systems analyst & designer / earth systems scientist
Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations (https://web.archive.org/web/20230328025721/https://orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/)
Hon. Editor VoteClimateOne.orgs.au's Climate Sentinel News
What an absolutely fascinating life you have led. Thank you for sharing it with me.
I am delighted that you largely agree with my proposals. Yes, please do indeed suggest improvements and extensions to the theory. Much appreciated.
Fondest regards,
-Julian
Cool theory, love it. Unlikely as it appears, it would be really funny if a major branch of physics ended up disrupted by a complete outsider's theory formulated in qualitative (non-math) language.
I remember reading that S. Hawking more or less proved that black holes radiate energy, so that smaller ones can end up vanishing entirely. How does that fit with your theory, or Smolin's? If the creation of a black hole also creates a universe, what happens to that universe when the black hole vanishes?
I really like the cosmological part, seems like a neat solution to many important problems. Nice work!
But I am not convinced at all by the evolutionary part:
1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition.
2. To have evolution we need reproduction, which we have here, but also some competition for resources. Do universes compete for something among themselves? In an evolutionary theory I would like to see a conclusion that in the long run there are no universes not optimized for survival. Without that we can only say that our universe is more probable than a universe which cannot harbor us, but that's not super interesting.
3. It is unecessary to make cosmological part work. I suppose they fit nicely together, but if cosmological part explains observations and gives correct predictions it does so regardless of a reason for our universe's starting conditions.
Thanks for that feedback, Michał. I am going to cheat and paste in again the lengthy reply I just made to Kaleberg, immediately above, because I see you're troubled by the same thing, the evolutionary part of the theory, and my reply is therefore essentially the same.
But I'll add in an extra point of reassurance for you first, though: To have evolution work in the case of universes, you don't need competition for resources. Universe have important differences from DNA-based animals. Universes, for example, can produce matter-antimatter pairs in unlimited numbers immediately after the Big Bang. They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.
And here is my reply to Kaleberg, again!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
“They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.”
1. If either process is done freely and don’t compete for resources, how can anything be said to be more or less efficient than another? Time is an in-universe constraint, it doesn’t exist outside of it, so there should be the same amount of outside-universe ‘types’ proliferating since they do so instantly and infinitely from their own pov.
You’d have to be suggesting some sort of meta/multi verse environment (which we inherently can never know about) where time still exists and universes spawn in some sort of limited space with one being able to reproduce ‘faster’ than the other. Otherwise, with zero reproductive cost and time being solely an in-universe constraint, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’.
2. Also, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
3. And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
Surely the main issue is how is the information [of how the ancester universes were constructed] of a successful universe is passed on to its daughter universes.
For the question of selection for 'successful universes', is this not simply a function of the number of daughter universes produced through the lifetime of a universe ie the more productive come to dominate the pool of potential universes that have come to exist [so far].
Because time or indeed any notions of scarcity or a limited pool only exist within the universe. Universes producing only 1 black hole and those producing billions would be equally ‘successful’ because there is no meaningful notion of an extra-universal environment for them to be competing in. It would just happen immediately and in perpetuity from an extra-universal pov (if such a thing can be said to exist).
Granted, though the absence of a 'mechanism' is not evidence for an idea being wrong. An example is the early to mid 20th century idea of 'continental drift', which was dismissed because there was no conceivable mechanism for lateral movement of continents until it was reframed in the 1960s as 'plate tectonics'.
My intuition is that the concepts of time and space are not operable in a multiverse where the author's concept of 'evolution' [of a universe towards one like ours] applies.
I’m not sure why you are using the word mechanism or how it applies to what I said.
But yes, your second paragraph is my point. It’s not intuitive however, we know objectively that time, causality, space are in-universe features that began with or shortly after the big bang.
2. That’s what I was thinking. If the reproductive cost is zero, per the article, and given that time is an in-universe constraint rather than existing outside of it, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’, if my logic is on track here.
Moreover, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
At any rate, this article is very interesting and I love his critiques of the mainstream theory and reasons behind it. Personally, I think that reality tends to be more interesting than whatever story we come up with to draw meaning from it, which is why his theory seems (to me anyway) to lose momentum when he gets into the cosmological and more speculative section.
"1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition."
I am a hobbyist at best and I'm sure I haven't grasped everything fully, so please indulge me. I agree with your statement, yet perhaps we could see galaxies from relatives-universes.
Could galaxies from neighboring universes expand toward us, be observable and perhaps even collide with a galaxy of ours? Could the origin of such galaxies be detected as different?
Without presuming another dimension, I'd guess that the multiverse resembles a clump of multiplying cells butting up against each other.
I dunno...
Any small black hole we create technologically (Mt. Everest mass) would be vastly inferior to our own universe. I see no reason to think such a small thing could contain enough energy, matter, complexity, etc. to generate a universe inside it capable of ultimately holding life. And that defeats the whole technological part of the argument.
Or do you suggest that there's a weird aspect to black holes that makes them all similar in scope and quality when you're inside them, regardless of their size as observed from the outside? That would be very strange indeed.
I suggest you look into black hole electrons, an old hypothesis that fell out of favor mostly because nobody could figure out how to test it, because I think you may be grossly underestimating the number of black holes involved.
Because it seems to me that the theory predicts something else: Every particle that can be made out of a black hole, will be made out of a black hole.
Aaaaargh! Yes, black hole electrons are an alarming possibility. Thanks for reminding me, I won't sleep tonight now...
No, I don't go there, because as you say, it seems untestable right now. And of course there are also the disturbing parallels between protons and black holes...
https://scitechdaily.com/interior-of-protons-exhibit-maximum-quantum-entanglement-may-share-common-physics-with-black-holes/
But again, I'm not qualified to wade into such deep water. I will stick to my modest task of explaining material reality at the macro scale in terms of evolution of universes...
🤯
I asked AI to compare your beautiful theory with my nested universe (NU) model and it found many similarities (A Universe That Doesn't Die (80) - by JOHANN OESTERREICHER). However, I work without Smolin's evolution and big bang as an eternally recycling system.
You often make me cry in grief and gratitude. The quote from Victor Weisskopf brought this whole thing into the sharpest of focus. This is the woo - a word used by Rockiversists to shame and silence the mystics among us. Woo is the romantic-love-feeling-courting of the world (Sophie Strand is talking about this). Woo is the seeking to connect heart and love and consciousness with the physical world that we have been disconnected from by a world view belief and paradigm that claimed total authority on "reality". This is a return of the personal and particular heart-based relationship with the physical world that we need for thriving. Thank you. Paid for subscription. This is the world that I want to live in.
Yes! I'm just a lay person into my third reading of this article, and every time my eyes get watery at the end. I just want to leave a thank you and encourage his work.
You might want to avoid association with him because he is a pariah in scientific mainstream, but Rupert Sheldrake has always been a great idol of mine, and I was wondering if you were at all inspired by him. He has spoken quite a bit about how structures (& physical rules) of the universe emerge through evolutionary processes. He's also fleshed out quite a few predictions, scientifically testable hypothesis that I think can be repurposed by your evolutionary cosmology.
Oh I haven't heard of his stuff about universes emerging through evo processes? I'm curious about it.
He is a bit ostracized for sure. He has some really interesting and relevant stuff, but many of his fans seem to particularly love his "morphic fields" theory which to me is so ridiculous it risks spoiling the rest of his content -- not because it's unbelievable or unreasonable as a theoretical framework (I love theories like this that push back against mainstream, often reductionist models) but because it seems to have to real explanatory value or intrigue whatsoever. It strikes me as something un-iterative that occupies the same space as countless other similar models that exist primarily to critique conformity, without having anything extra going for it.
Yep, I agree that black holes play very important role, the are basically non-agentic matter (they can't "choose")
We're pretty much made out of big bangs (singularities, geometrical points) bumping into each other.
We shared the ethicophysics theory that interprets physics as discrete point agents randomly choosing quantum paths - one, two or more.
Everything emerges from that, it's infinitely elegant and makes modeling the ultimate ethical future trivial.
Everything is made out of one of 3 things:
1. Agents (point or composite agents) - energy-like, time-like
2. Agentic matter - point agents that are contained by other point agents, things like chairs and stones
3. Non-agenting matter (black holes) - matter-like, space-like
I might be missing the mechanisms of heredity within this evolutionary paradigm. If a universe's 'fitness' is simply determined by the propensity for black holes to form within it, i.e:
1. Black holes spawn universes
2. Universes well-suited for black holes production greatly outnumber those where black holes are scarce
3. Technological societies provide an immense evolutionary advantage in this context, as technological progress converges towards the creation of artificial black holes (which greatly outnumber naturally-formed ones)
how then would universes inherit from the context of their spawning black hole? What might be the analogue to recombination or mosaicism yielding subtle incremental differences subject to selective pressure?
First, this is fantastic. I found Smolin's book three years ago, when Covid gave me time and motivation to think about why the universe exists. The concept forms its own gravitational well that sucks in those of us who share the instinct that dark matter is not delivering on its initial promise. I am grateful you are doing this project, and building a community of people crazy enough to take it seriously.
I want to get feedback on a related theory that shepherds the universe to the exact same fine-tuned constants as your and Smolin's evolution, but without going through trial and error phase. I would really like your reaction. (Yes, the theory is mine, and yes I also have no formal background to support the notion that I can generate a useful theory here. So it goes. I've been sitting on this for a while, without a community to test it on, so again, huge thanks for having the courage to start publishing on line here.)
The endpoint is trillions of technologically-produced black holes. And the mechanism is that while you are positing we get there by sampling potential futures in series (one at a time, through evolution), I think we get to the same place by sampling potential futures in parallel.
Here is how.
Rather than arrive at the end state of intelligent life through cycles of trial and error (black hole birth and universe creation), we can instead posit the following: (a) the physical constants of the universe could be something else (other than what we see, which are weirdly fined tuned for life); (b) those constants are actually variables at sufficiently high energy, like at the moment of the Big Bang; (c) the constants physically freeze into place as the universe cools; (d) this freezing is really an annealing process; and (e) the path that leads to the most rapid cooling is the one that gets frozen in. That's it. If you assume that, you find yourself on a path to intelligent life.
Why? One weird property of life is that it accelerates the creation of entropy. Life is good at finding pockets of energy, consuming that energy to create more life, and releasing low grade heat as a byproduct. Intelligent life is theoretically even more efficient at this than run-of-the-mill life. As you point out, black hole formation is the ultimate way of converting energy to entropy. So a theory that says "black hole formation is reproductive" and one that says "black hole formation is maximally energy dissipating, and the universe will go down the path that cools most quickly" end up in exactly the same place at the end.
The reason I like this theory, even after reading yours and Smolin's, is that the mechanism for fine-tuning isn't reliant on a random walk. It does require one large, uncomfortable leap: the annealing process has to be impacted by events that occur far in the future, after those constants have been fixed (e.g., the constants forming at/near the Big Bang has to somehow be influence by the ability to form life billions of years later). Smolin's theory allows the universe to sampling possible states through a random walk. This idea instead posits an anneal process that samples possible future universe through what is probably a uncollapsed quantum state that encompasses future times. If you think about it long enough, the anneal process requires some degree of retrocausality, which not exactly a great place to be. But also we have really had trouble figuring out how time actually works in physics, there are versions of retrocausality in quantum theory that are not entirely nuts, and, well, at some point we know that some laws of physics need to be rethought for the universe to make sense. I vote for this one, but understand that's a matter of taste.
I think that everything else you predict would hold for an annealed system vs an evolved one. Again, the only difference is evolution samples future states in series, while the anneal samples in parallel.
I would love comment, feedback, and conversation. Thanks again.
Yes, the key question is how the information relevant for 'cosmological evolution' is passed to future states through black holes. Having it processed in parallel is conceptually simpler.
I wanted to specifically compliment you on how well you are able to distill an extremely esoteric and complicated set of theoretical/observational data into a well argued, coherent essay supporting your ideas. IMO not enough people understand how truly rare it is for someone to 1) even have the capacity to understand the frontiers of something such as cosmology and 2) understand this well enough to communicate it to a lay audience through a medium which is graspable. I'm a genetic counselor, so my work is analogously to translate evolution/mendelian risks to everyday people in such as a way that they can make informed decisions about things that affect their lives and that of their offspring. If you think the services of someone such as me might eventually be of use to you, let's chat more, or perhaps downstream...
One specific question if you get around to a reply: If I understood you, directly observing the EM radation from these large filaments in relation to the direct-collapse SMBHs is difficult to do because so much time has passed that these orientations in space have morphed over gajillions of years to make those relationships hard to appreciate. I'm wondering if that is also true of the large filaments that should have the North/South orientation to the SMBHs. eg. is it possible to predict, observe, and confirm if at the ends of these large filaments there are appropriately positioned SMBHs, or is this too Laplace's Demon-y to say "the angular tilty-ness of the SMBHs aligns with the direction of their massive quasar output and is what created the filament architecture we see today"?
Hoho! "If this interpretation is correct, GRB 250702B would represent the first time humanity has ever witnessed a relativistic jet produced by an intermediate mass black hole in the act of consuming a star." https://phys.org/news/2026-03-hour-explosion.html